Whales spared as judge rules against sonar sweeps

November 2 2002

A federal judge has prohibited the United States Navy from combing the world's oceans with a powerful new sonar, ruling that the booming sounds meant to detect enemy submarines could cause irreparable harm to whales.

The temporary injunction bans a type of low-frequency sonar that has not been conclusively linked to marine mammal mortality.

Although the ruling could allow the navy to resume using the sonar in some places, Judge Elizabeth LaPorte imposed a worldwide ban until navy chiefs and environmental experts could agree on a list of spots where sailors could deploy the sonar without harming sea life.

The judge, who is based in San Francisco, agreed with the navy that even a temporary peacetime ban on the low-frequency sonar system could hamper military preparedness.

She gave the navy and environmental groups that filed the lawsuit until November 7 to report back to her with an interim solution.");document.write("

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The navy and marine fisheries officials declined immediate comment.

But environmental groups were elated by the preliminary injunction. They had sued to overturn the Bush Administration's decision in July that gave the navy permission to "harass" or injure whales in training missions using the sonar designed to search for super-quiet diesel submarines.

"There was no justification for giving the navy a blank cheque to operate this sonar in 75 per cent of the world's oceans," said Joel Reynolds, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defence Council. If allowed to continue, he said, the sonar system would have "threatened marine life on a staggering and unprecedented geographic scale".

In early 2000, 16 beaked whales beached themselves in the Bahamas in a mass-stranding that the navy and other authorities have linked to bursts of mid-frequency sonar. A similar mass die-off of whales occurred in September in the Canary Islands, following naval operations by warships from the US and nearly a dozen NATO allies.